IPH trough - Field Thermal Power Incident and Loop Configuration

Hi everyone, I'm new in the forum and I'm starting in these days to use SAM to simulate parabolic trough IPH systems.

I'm having troubles in understanding why the performance of a plant is that much affected by the configuration of the system, in terms of number of loops and number of assemblies per loop. Here is an example, I have simulated the same plant (same location, receivers, collector typology, number of collectors and ,therefore, same aperture area and nominal power of 3MWt) in 3 different configurations:

- 1 loop, 12 assemblies/loop
- 2 loops, 6 assemblies/loop
- 3 loops, 4 assemblies/loop



In the figure below there is a summary of the results.

Shouldn't the Field thermal power incident be the same in the 3 cases? Looking at the results, it's like SAM is multiplying this value by the number of loops in the field, while I was expecting it depended only by the field aperture area (which is the same in the 3 simulations).

Can anyone help me in solving this doubt? Attached you can find the project file I used (modifying only the number of SCA/HCE assemblies per loop).

Thanks in advance!

Tommaso Tampucci

Hi!
Did you understand why that happened?

Best regards,
Bernardo.

Hello,

The IPH trough model uses the same code for the loop configuration as the Physical Trough model. Please see the references in this post:

sam.nrel.gov/forum/forum-general/1587

Changing the loop configuration requires changing other parameters to ensure the design is valid.

Best regards,
Paul.

Hi!
Did you understand why that happened?

Best regards,
Bernardo.

Hi Bernardo, actually I recently tried again with a new case study (as well as with the posted one) and I did not have such a problem anymore.
Maybe it has been fixed with recent updates?

Hello,

The IPH trough model uses the same code for the loop configuration as the Physical Trough model. Please see the references in this post:

sam.nrel.gov/forum/forum-general/1587

Changing the loop configuration requires changing other parameters to ensure the design is valid.

Best regards,
Paul.

Hi, thanks fo the reply. See my answer above. Now it works nicely.
Thanks again

Tommaso